What is the best slasher movie of all time?

From the genre's foundational texts to self-aware reinventions and modern reboots, slasher fans have remarkably strong loyalties about which entry set the gold standard. Which is definitive?

1. 1
   Psycho (1960)

   Alfred Hitchcock's boundary-shattering proto-slasher — killing its star in the first act, introducing Norman Bates, and making audiences afraid of showers forever.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Scream (1996)

   Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's brilliant meta-slasher that both deconstructed and revitalized the genre, with Ghostface asking the rules while breaking them all.
   947pts
3. 3
   Halloween (1978)

   John Carpenter's lean, relentless original — Michael Myers stalking babysitters in Haddonfield — invented the slasher template with its POV camerawork, synth score, and Shape in white.
   789pts
4. 4
   Candyman (1992)

   Bernard Rose's atmospheric supernatural slasher set in Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project — summoning the hook-handed Candyman by mirror — fusing urban legend with social commentary.
   710pts
5. 5
   Halloween (2018)

   David Gordon Green's direct sequel to Carpenter's original — erasing all other sequels — Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode now a fortified survivalist facing one last confrontation with Myers.
   609pts
6. 6
   Sleepaway Camp (1983)

   Robert Hiltzik's low-budget summer-camp slasher cult classic, remembered for its eccentric characters, brutal kills, and one of the most shocking twist endings in horror history.
   473pts
7. 7
   Black Christmas (1974)

   Bob Clark's Canadian proto-slasher predating Halloween — a sorority house stalked by an obscene phone-calling killer — the template the subgenre would be built on.
   284pts
8. 8
   Peeping Tom (1960)

   Michael Powell's controversial 1960 British study of a serial killer who films his victims' dying moments, effectively ended Powell's career but is now recognized as one of the greatest horror films ever made.
   284pts
9. 9
   Friday the 13th (1980)

   Sean S. Cunningham's iconic summer-camp slasher that launched Jason Voorhees and a decade of imitators, beloved for its gory Tom Savini effects and a killer twist ending.
   284pts
10. 10
    Suspiria (1977)

    Dario Argento's hallucinatory Italian giallo-slasher set in a German dance academy, its supersaturated Technicolor palette and Goblin score making it the most visually radical horror film of its era.
    284pts
11. 11
    Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

    Tobe Hooper's gritty, almost unbearable 1974 masterpiece of rural terror, introducing Leatherface and producing a film whose raw power still disturbs decades later.
    284pts
12. 12
    A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

    Wes Craven's inventive slasher set in the dream world, introducing Freddy Krueger's razor-gloved horror and one of the genre's most terrifying concepts: you can die in your sleep.
    1pts
13. 13
    I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

    Jim Gillespie's teen slasher with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar pursued by a hook-wielding fisherman, a defining late-90s slasher and a post-Scream blockbuster.
    1pts
14. 14
    Urban Legend (1998)

    Jamie Blanks's campus slasher built around murders staged as famous urban legends, a sleek post-Scream entry with a strong cast and a neat final-act inversion.
    1pts